Credit: COURTESY OF JOHN HURLEY FOR THE PROGERIA RESEARCH FOUNDATION" /> Credit: COURTESY OF JOHN HURLEY FOR THE PROGERIA RESEARCH FOUNDATIONLeslie Gordon's son Sam was 22 months old when he was diagnosed with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome, a devastating disease in which children age rapidly and usually die between their 7th and 20th birthdays. Gordon, an MD/PhD, and her MD husband, Scott Berns, discovered an astonishing void of information on the disease, which is so rare that it

Asking prominent people to serve on a journal's editorial board is no simple task. First, you have to identify the leaders in your field. That usually means reading lots of papers, going to meetings, and speaking to a network of experts you trust, among other strategies. For Bentham Science Publishers Ltd, "a major STM journal publisher of 70 online and print journals, and 4 print/online book (series)" that "answers the informational needs of the pharmaceutical, biomedical and medical research c

When our news editor, Alison McCook, emailed me yesterday to tell me that the editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) linkurl:had been sacked,;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23140/ I had a bit of déjà vu. Just over seven years ago, I received a similar email from a colleague at JAMA, where I had recently finished a stint as co-editor in chief of the medical student section. JAMA?s editor, George Lundberg, with whom I had worked and whom I still consider a close ment

The linkurl:Keystone Symposium;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23134/ I?m at this week in Santa Fe is billed as being about two related subjects: the molecular mechanisms of cardiac disease and the molecular mechanisms of regeneration. And while the talks on regeneration ? that translates here roughly into stem cell therapy ? are mostly scheduled for today (Wednesday) and tomorrow, the use of stem cells to regenerate the heart is already the loud buzz at poster sessions, and is at leas

How do you move from elegantly constructed mouse knockouts like the ones presented at the linkurl:Keystone Symposium on Molecular Mechanisms of Cardiac Disease and Regeneration;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23130/ here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to pesky wild-type humans who often seem to court heart attacks? If you?re linkurl:Elizabeth Nabel,;http://www.genome.gov/17015041 director of the linkurl:National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute,;http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/new/press/05-01-26.ht

Epigenetics and chromatin remodeling, it turns out, may play a role in heart disease. In one of two keynote addresses that opened the Keystone Symposia?s meeting on Molecular Mechanisms of Cardiac Disease and Regeneration here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, linkurl:Eric Olson;http://hamon.swmed.edu/faculty/olson2001.html showed why he?s received a number of awards from the American Heart Association, and why one of his earlier papers, linking calcineurin to cardiac hypertrophy, was a linkurl:Hot Paper

President Bush thinks that science is the key to keeping the US ahead. It will help the country wean itself off fossil fuels, he said in his fifth linkurl:State of the Union;http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html last night, and it will keep the nation?s businesses competitive in the global marketplace. He wants to start with children, whom he?d like to see ?take more math and science and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations.? Pre

Despite the fact that he appears to have fabricated at least half of the patients in a 2005 linkurl:Lancet study;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/22952/ , Norwegian researcher Jon Sudbo has an opinion on the ethics of 'rigorously conducted clinical trials' ? or at least he did in 2001. The results of such trials, he wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine ? which is now investigating his work published there ? 'make up the foundation for what we like to term 'evidence-b

Now that 21 people have been infected with avian flu in Turkey, there has been a proliferation of news about the bird which Ben Franklin, who linkurl:celebrated his 300th birthday yesterday;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/22973/ , suggested as the US?s linkurl:national bird;http://www.greatseal.com/symbols/turkey.html . It turns out that turkeys are remarkably intelligent and technologically sophisticated. Today?s winner: linkurl:?Turkey able to develop bird flu vaccine: professor.?;h

Seoul National University report removes any lingering doubts, but says cloned dog was genuine

I found out today that I got lucky. Human cloning has always received the lion's share of headlines, but I've always been more fascinated by the cloning of the lions ? animal cloning, in particular the quirky but earnest gang that would like to clone your pet for royal sums. So I might have felt vindicated by today's news ? which I reported on linkurl:here;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/22933/ ? that while Woo-Suk Hwang's claims on human cloning were based on fraud, his cloning of lin

in industryand academia.